


strange behaviours

by nostomaniac



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: (yes death is a character), Angst, Death, F/M, again the leader of les amis de l'abc is homo as hell, also cosette ; ), les miserables mmh, marius is an idiot eponine adores, ok psa that grantaire and enjolras are super gay, spoiler alert eponine dies, this is writing prac idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 23:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7484178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostomaniac/pseuds/nostomaniac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which death talks about one of their favourite miserable creatures</p>
<p>eponine dies and marius is an idealistic idiot - eponine adores him anyway</p>
<p>flowers, rain, blood; a girl dressed in dreams and trousers and a boy of the barricade pleading with the empty air</p>
            </blockquote>





	strange behaviours

**Author's Note:**

> this is really just writing practice my buds - basically a messy ass mishmash of aspects of eponine's character and death from the musical and book
> 
> she's beauty she's grace death will make her eyes glaze mate
> 
> reminder that this has major spoilers for both, so don't read on if you don't like those i suppose
> 
> this was written over a week because the only thing i've been consistent in is my lack of motivation

Silent were the children of the barricade.

 

For what small consolation would mere uttered words bring? There was such little comfort in expressing the wordless emotion within them. There was such little comfort in feeble, helpless attempts at adequately translating passion and sorrow and fury and, if they could momentarily jettison their infallible pride and admit it, self-absorbed dread, into minute vibrations of the gunsmoke-laced air, of air that smelled of me.

 

No, nothing can stop this unfathomable yet inexorable entity. The one that escorts souls out of bullet holes that, with defiance against human determination, germinate and mature and bloom with blood. The one that, out of hubris or foolishness or pure desperation, some men constantly try to circumvent, to elude, to run from. The one that others crave and embrace, against their own instincts of self-preservation.

 

The one that haunts the children now in the numbness that danced down their spines. For I lingered and ghosted the streets of Paris, a harbinger of endings, heralding the end of their own petty existences.

 

These young men, for all their bravado and fervour to become martyrs for the emancipation of the oppressed working-class, for all their selfless talk of their lives having no meaning compared to the higher cause they endeavoured so towards, were still afraid of me.

 

Humans can be such amusing creatures, with their contradictions and oxymorons, with their intrinsic need to think themselves significant enough somehow so as to grant anything meaning, with their intermingling fear and acceptance of me, of what is ineluctable, unavoidable.

 

But sometimes, the nature of these delusional little animals breathes out something special. In this case: a girl born of virtue’s absence and reborn in unforgiving, nonchalant streets where the festering, life-divested scum of France looked forward to me - through nothing more than the masochistic, blind, all-consuming love of a certain Marius Pontmercy.

 

And yet that love had been her redemption, her salvation, her solace from her evil thoughts – the ones that threw the old flighty convict the note holding the word that prompted him to flee along with the beauty who tore Marius and her asunder, the ones that slipped a letter addressed to Monsieur Marius into her men’s trousers, the ones that hoarsely called out for her Marius to return to the barricades that I might claim their souls together, the ones that hurled her at me for a stolen kiss.

 

After all, who would deny the request of a despondent soul wracked with fanatical, invented mirages of a world where Marius Pontmercy loved her (or worse: the devastating revelation of the world they lived in, a world where her self-destructive devotion to the silly boy who fell in love with her erstwhile playmate was unrequited and unwanted and spurned)?

 

Indeed, Eponine Jondrette’s life had been cold and dark. After the bankruptcy of the Thernadier inn, her innate charisma and prettiness were marred by palette knives of the debauchery, crime and drink that the desperate so often turn to. Her visage became lined and skeletal, her young, supple skin stretched across a too-large canvas in pitiful emaciation, her smile yellowed and incomplete, her shoulders in a permanent slump that extended her scapulae outwards from her youth-robbed body like the wings of a fallen angel.

 

So often I have thought that she would succumb to me, and yet she eluded me with the artifice of the youthful aplomb she still retained vestiges of. Now that her soul was straining towards me, I felt uncharacteristically regretful. Hers was an extraordinary character; I would have liked to keep her around longer.

 

But in their last moments the prospect of the end is enough incentive for humans to bereave themselves of their every inhibition (regrettably, this means that most permanently stain themselves with a dignified fragrance), and Eponine’s obstreperous spirit is ever accentuated, still holding on despite the inevitable, still clinging to life despite what she knew would come.

 

Her meagre face belonged to one much older, and yet was still made beautiful by her flashing, intelligent brown eyes – sunken, they were nevertheless large and long-lashed among the thin cast of features she bore. Lights waltzed and pranced and revolted in her enigmatic eyes – lights of steely defiance, of indomitable, childlike hope.

 

And now, even as she reached, stared up at her Marius, even bleeding in his strong, safe arms, even in the dim, flickering street lights of Paris, lights of love and contrition and fear and mirth and happiness danced around her glazed irises.

 

“Monsieur Marius,” she whispered now, not in her ragged, unrefined argot but in poor mimicry of sophisticated Parisian (perhaps some part of her still believed she could impress him), “I took the bullet for you, I did, and how perfectly droll it is! It went through my hand and out through my back. But it was because I wanted to die before you. What a queer idea it seems now!”

 

Still in denial of me, the boy knelt on the bloodstained street, clutching onto Eponine’s broken body as if holding onto a lifeline, as if he were dying instead of she. His hand whitened as he tried to staunch the bleeding. “Oh, God, Eponine, you’re hurt, you need help, your hair is dripping with it – it’s everywhere, God, Eponine…”

 

Eponine reached out her unscathed hand and touched Marius’s face, almost as if she were in a dream, almost as if Marius were an impossible mirage, almost as if he could disappear if she didn’t touch him. Her voice heavy with delirium, she said, “You’re here. You seem almost like a heaven-sent vision, I cannot believe it – you’re here. You must like me quite a lot! But fret not, Monsieur. Nothing can hurt me when I’m with you. Nothing can hurt me when I’m in your arms.”

 

She closed her tormented eyes and smiled. “You’re all I need.”

 

Marius raised his eyes, petulant. Tears ran in rivulets down his cheeks, or were they raindrops? “You will live, I swear it to you, you will live. The Father above have mercy on ‘Ponine, on my dear friend-“

 

“Shut up, Marius,” she said affectionately, laughter in her cracking voice. “Hold me now, you romantic dolt, and let it be.” In my face, in the unchanging, unyielding face of death, she smiled bravely, and while I had never felt the warmth of sympathy or compassion, grudging respect rises up in me at this human’s fearlessness.

 

She had already accepted me long before her hand touched the muzzle of the National Guardsman’s muzzle, long before she fell into Marius’s arms. And she grinned now, her brand of defiance against all odds, against her hard life, against whatever she had gone through.

 

And Marius, in the not atypical manner that humans who loved the dying did, began to understand that Eponine was beyond saving, beyond even his righteousness and love.

 

“You would have lived longer if you did not guard my mortal life, Eponine,” he scolded now, but gently. “I could’ve taught you how, I’m educated in this sort of affair.”

 

“You wealthy upper-class men could teach me anything, having gone to school,” she bantered back gaily.

 

Sudden panic inspired consternated palpitations in her slowing heart – what if she is left behind, what if the National Guard comes back for another skirmish and Marius went? She caught Marius’s hand as he lifted it up to push a strand of her hair behind her ear, and she urgently said, “For God’s sake, don’t desert me now.”

 

“I would not for the world,” he vowed, with the veracity you can only muster when you make a promise to a dying girl at the barricades.

 

Placated, she let her hand fall to her pocket, where it fumbled. It drew out, without her volition, a letter written on luxuriant parchment with a light, unmistakable hand. With some reluctance, she folded it neatly and placed it in Marius’s hand.

 

“It is addressed to you from Mademoiselle Cosette,” Eponine rasped. “I must confess that I kept it from you, although my conscience castigates me so! I would not want you to be angry with me in the afterlife for withdrawing it from you.”

 

Marius’s eyes flashed momentarily with surprise and wonder. Eyes that were bluer than any one person had any right to be, thought Eponine, blue crevasses that her attention always gravitated towards. "I assumed - I assumed that she and her father had fled before the uprising could come to fruition. I assumed that she was lost to me forever. God, Eponine. This letter lifts a heavy weight from my heart. Thank you." He accepted the envelope from Eponine's shaking palm.

 

"Look at the joy you hold in your eyes, Monsieur," she said wanly. “Almost as if I’ve given you renewed life. It matters not, though. We will all die here.” She grasped Marius’s hand and smiled. “I swear by God’s name, we will all meet our demise. I am only the first.”

 

Her premonition ringing ominously in his ears, Marius began to speak, began to try to qualm her fears, but Eponine laughed cynically and told him, sadly, “I speak only the truth, Marius. In fact, do you remember the boy who called you here? He and I are one and the same. I wanted to die with you at the barricades, broken bodies together, at last. God forgive me the things I've done. But now..."

 

She bucked with pain, but a faint smile remained upon her thin mouth. "Just... do not leave me."

 

A thin voice warbled a bouncing, vivacious melody near them, and Eponine's eyes flew open. "Gavroche?" she whispered. "Is that you?"

 

"The boy?" Marius was bemused. "Gavroche is fervently invested in La Amis de l'ABC. Only fourteen but he participates actively - even warned us that Inspector Javert was the "volunteer" who signed up to have us killed." A sudden thought occurred to him. "He has two younger boys he tends to. Both piteous, little urchins. I suppose he's taken them for his brothers."

 

Eponine shook her head in alarm. "Tell Gavroche he must not partake in this. He is brave but he needs to live. Please, Marius. Tell him to stay away. He will be killed along with the rest of us."

 

Perturbed at Eponine's distress, Marius reassured her, "Do not worry, 'Ponine. He will be sound. I promise."

 

She allowed her head to loll back against Marius’s forearm. Then – and this is rather unprecedented – she opened her mouth and sang.

 

Not a drinking song as she so often warbled, but a complex, unconventional countermelody that commiserated with and opposed Gavroche’s with equal verve as Marius listened with some awe. The wordless run painted castles in the air, heaven, a choir of angels, peace, relief, an amaranthine respite.

 

Eponine coughed suddenly and a thin rivulet of blood streamed from her mouth. Marius gently dabbed at it with his frilled sleeve, his blue eyes filling with unshed tears.

 

"Oh, look, Monsieur," Eponine chided. "Your fancy boy dress is ruined." She grinned and added insouciantly, as if her chest weren't falling and rising fast with death, "Don't tell Gavroche, he may scold me for being so careless."

 

"Peace now, Eponine," Marius replied, his voice growing agonised.

 

 “He'd tell me I look ridiculous, a boy with lovely womanly curves! I wager you thought I was a man in these trousers. I wager it, solemnly. Where have the five francs you gave me gone?”

 

Marius' voice grew ever fainter with concealed sorrow. “Oh, dear ‘Ponine, do you not remember? You let them fall from that hand of yours in the Field of the Lark. You told me that it was not money you wanted.”

 

“Oh, that is right,” Eponine replied, a sad undertone to her voice. “I recall you being so happy, as if I’ve given you the key to the heavens when I told you my old playmate’s address! But of course I did, did I not? You love her; you love Cosette.” She laughed suddenly – not purely in self-mockery as she so often does, but a pure obligation as vitality whistled out in her too fast, too soon. Blood marched on out of the wound in her abdomen, conducting their own insurrection against the girl’s very life.

 

“The things you do, Eponine.” His handsome face, tragically contorted in grief, managed a weak smile. “I owe you my life. You were so unafraid, so fearless – the bravest among us, I imagine!” He choked down suppressed tears, his fingers mindlessly weaving a reassuring caress through the wounded girl’s tousled hair. “And I owe you the world for delivering my letter to Cosette, my God-given love, my happiness and angel. I am forever in your debt, Eponine.”

 

“Monsieur, you talk about compensation of such undeserved grandeur,” Eponine chided gently, slipping back into her familiar, street lingo. Her breath catching in her throat, she continued, “Of course, you have always been the type for such quixotic drivel. But it’s not the world that I want, or your life, or anything as huge.”

 

This, of course, was a lie, in all technicality; Eponine had wanted to, plotted to, die at the barricades with Marius. But from what I’ve learned from humans, I know that they had a hypocritical proclivity for showing the people they love their best selves.

 

And, after all, she loved him. She could never ask for his life, though his vows to lay it down for her was a delusion conceived of her wildest imaginations.

 

“No,” she said quietly. “All I ask of you is to stay by me, and hold me, and shelter me.”

 

For indeed, rain had begun to fall upon her cold, shivering skin, but under his touch, she felt as much as home as any piteous urchin could ever feel. A breath away from where Marius Pontmercy was, she felt whole, fixed, complete.

 

“I swear to you, I will be here. I will guard you until you sleep.”

 

A sigh passed through her lips.

 

I waited. Surely she would die now. I would sweep her soul up and be done with it. Unremarkable, uneventful.

 

Though it was indeed strange, that Eponine was dressed in a child’s dreams of love and dancing among stars, a boy’s bloodstained trousers and rain-streaked inventions of happiness, that this funny little creature was curled against the chest of her polar opposite, a boy alive, sorrowful, and faced by crushing reality.

 

Air whistled through Eponine’s teeth as she relaxed against Marius. He pressed his lips against her forehead in reverent farewell. I extended my hand towards the girl.

 

“And, oh, Monsieur?”

 

I watched as Eponine’s soul stepped out of her body, a phantasm, a diaphanous outline that straddled the line between life and death, existence and nonexistence.

 

And yet, the words tumbled out, an infraction against the laws of passing, and a grin appears on Eponine’s face. “The summer rains make the flowers grow. Make sure to pick the prettiest for Cosette.”

 

Almost. Almost.

 

Eponine’s soul felt like a grey sky and empty promises.

 

And while I didn’t feel any sentimentality for her…

 

-

 

Marius ran a wizened finger gingerly across the wildflowers' exquisite petals. A rare pewter blue, they were not beautiful, but they were striking, singing towards the sunlight between the roses with fierce independence. In fact…

 

Discombobulated, Marius laughed mirthfully. _She_ did tell him to pick the prettiest ones, after all, did she not?

 

“I shall honour your dying wish, Mademoiselle,” he declared with jest.

And perchance it was just the whims of an aging imagination, but as he secured the dainty blossoms with a lace ribbon, he swore he could hear a voice whispering into his ear.

 

_“Monsieur Marius? I think I might have been just a little in love with you.”_


End file.
